Saturday, November 7, 2009

Done, and Done.

Or maybe done... and done in. This has been a hard, no-fun week for me, and lonely, in an odd sort of way. There are always a jillion people around, but not to help me do this job. And certainly not in the middle of the night. Lonely is the right word, I think.

I made a breakthrough today when I “mastered” the CD for duplication. I have been worried about this, because I have burned CDs of things I have recorded before, and the quality has always been disappointing to me. I wondered if the problem was with Logic Studio, but for heaven’s sake, it is a professional program, and it is supposed to turn out a top-quality product. But when I would play back CDs, I would get sort of a thin, tinny piano sound, and the strings and voices would sound a little shrill to me. Certainly not the rich sound that comes from my speakers or headphones. But I felt inspired to research the mastering process a little before I made the CD... I don’t even know why, because I knew I just had to burn the CD.

The first thing I found is that Logic Studio has a setting for making mp3 format files that uses a higher resolution than standard. Then I found out that the default disc-burning speed is 24x... and apparently the faster you burn a CD, the lower the quality! Who even knew that??? Not even DK, and he knows all kinds of useless facts. Apparently for the good quality CDs, the maximum burn speed should be 4x! And best would be 1x. So I burned one at the slower speed, and then took a spin in the car for a good listen... I like to drive over by the elementary school for this purpose. Don’t even know why. It only took about two minutes before I was ready to do a happy dance... it worked. The quality is awesome.

And DK helped me work on the album art today. I love it. I am looking forward to a less difficult, less lonely week. I may not post any more full-length songs here, because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of the CD, but I am going to eventually get all the words, and stories behind songs up here on the blog... there is not room in the CD insert for all the lyrics, so I will put them up here instead. Have a great weekend...

This is going to be a beautiful CD of songs you have written, with many stunning vocal performances. I hope you're resting your weary head. I'm glad to now have that tidbit about burning cds and the quality. Thanks for all you do for all of us.

It’s All About the Baby

It’s All About the Baby is my CD of original Christmas music and my arrangements of traditional songs. I sold these CDs for the 2009 Christmas season. Amazingly, they sold out. CDs are now available for Christmas 2010 for a limited time only. Click on the link below.